Movie review: the essential truth of "Sarah's Key."

[CTyankee]

Lukewarm apologies to the NYT, but I found "Sarah's Key" to be a very good movie. It is an intriguing tale, involving a Jewish family in Paris in 1942, when French police were sent to round up Jews and deport them to concentration camps. The French police, egged on by the neighbors of their Jewish residents, were determined and pretty efficient.

Kristen Scott Thomas is terrific in the lead role of a journalist in search of the Jewish family's little girl, Sarah. She is particularly effective since it is obvious that she speaks fluent French, as her scenes with her French husband and inlaws are all in French, and her accent in the scenes with her Anglo and American coworkers are in perfect American English.

I was dreading a lot of this movie and for good reason. It is horrifying to once again confront the Holocaust among the so-called "good people" who nonetheless were complicit in turning in their Jewish neighbors and the French police were complying with hauling these people away and into certain death camps. It is good that, at long last, there was a scene running a video of Jacques Chirac formally apologizing and acknowledging France's complicity in this horror.

If you can stomach some of this dreadful truth, it does have an antidote of feeling good. The story is so bleak, I was glad to have "some" good news toward the end with Thomas and her new life in NYC. OK, maybe a little too hokey for the Edge of the Precipice crowd, but give me a little hope here...

[jannyk]

1. The book was excellent - didn't know it was a movie.

[CTyankee]

2. It's a good movie. I recommend it to you.

The performances were especially riviting.

It's hard to find. I only found it in a little art movie house at the edge of New Haven. The big arthouse movie theatre is difficult because of parking so this one has been a life saver for those of us who want to see the good stuff...

[Little Star]

3. I'm glad you enjoyed it. However....

I think it would depress me and I'm already depressed enough. I can watch & read true crime but when it comes to horrors the magnitude of the Holocaust it really brings me down.

Thanks for the review though.

[CTyankee]

6. It came short of depressing me. I was prepared for some of it. It wasn't terrible.

So I would recommend it for the cinematic art that it was...

[truedelphi]

4. One thing that is rarely mentioned about those inhumne days -

Officials were not rounding up "Jewish people," they were rounding up "terrorists."

It's hard for people to turn on other "people." That is why it is important to have a label to replace the humanity behind the label.

And Nine Eleven put that expression into our lexicon as ell. The American people are only one emergency away from needing to be as ruthless about rounding up whatever group our Powers that Be decide to label with the scarey term.

[CTyankee]

7. Oh no, I don't believe that for one minute! They were rounding up Jews!

This was the whole plan. And the tragedy was the it wasn't "hard for the people" not to turn on other people. It was all too easy! Anti-semitism had been (and still is) a disease that infected whole generations of people.

No, this was all about the Jews and the extermination of them, pure and simple...

[truedelphi]

9. "They Thought They Were Free,"

Read it and come to understand.

The Powers that Were in terms of Nazism had to lie and place labels on those who were rounded up.

I think one of the more poignant moments in "They Thought They Were Free" came when the young German police officer is interrupted from his trying too investigate which local thugs were responsible for the burning of the Jewish temple in Kronenberg on Kristelnacht.

He is pulled away from this assignment (one he has given himself) to go and round up his Jewish neighbors - for their safety.

Read that book and you will come away with a different look at what was going on over in Germany.

And in France, the orders to the local gendarmes to arrest Jewish people came with the words "terrorists" written on them.

I am not trying to suggest that the Gestapo and SS didn't go after Jewish people, but there was a lot of "labeling" of the Jewish people to make it more palatable for the average person. (Much as we Americans were told that the bombs used in the "Shock and Awe" campaign were "smart bombs" and didn't kill any bad people. And of course, Our Powers that Be don't have the burning bodies and the wounded troops featured on the TV news. Our Powers that Be sure learned a lot from the Vietnam era.)

In Kronenberg, in many cases, people should be "rounded up for their safety." And then they should be "resettled."

In some cases the expression "terrorists" was sued.

In the Anne Frank Museum, you can see the order that allowed the Gestapo to come for the Frank family. Officially they were arrested for possessing "terrorist" equipment - that is the radio that they owned.

[CTyankee]

10. Not so much in this story...

Many non jewish french people had pretty much a "they had it coming" attitude towards the jews as they were being rounded up.

The nazis may have tried those techniques, at least initially, but the fact is that these jews were rounded up and removed in plain sight of Parisians who stood by and did nothing. The french authorities just collapsed in the face of the Nazis aggression and invasion and their collaboration with them was clear. This was not talked about too much in this country because the french were our allies. Some allies.That is why Chirac's apology came as such an event all those years later. The french had been living a lie.

[truedelphi]

11. Well, just what were the French people going to do?

I mean, if the SWAT team comes for one of your Muslim neighbors, do you run out in the street and ask why the guy is being led away? I know I didn't worry about Muslims after Nine Eleven. I forget the exact number of people rounded up in SF Bay area after Nine Eleven, but I think it was a dozen or so people. Those Muslims were taken quietly, with no notice.

And only after their release did some newspaper editors decide to make a noise about it. And then only in terms of caaes where "totally innocent" people had been taken away. (Example: guy in twenties of Muslim parents, who never attended a mosque, has more newspaper coverage than a similar guy who did attend mosque services.)

Nine million people died in the Holocaust. Three million of them were not Jewish but Union Leaders, Catholic dissidents, dissidents in general, gay people, and of course those who tried to look out for their Jewish friends.

The other thing that is not pointed out in most discussions of what went on in Europe during the Totalitarian take over, is that a lot of people who did not identify with the Nazi cause had left their countries for safer shores. So the more liberal and politically knowledgeable were gone. While those who were not liberal and who were politically knowledgeable did get to participate in the atrocities.

Then add in the fact that people were being bombed, having to use ration cards, and worried that they may be next ones in line for concentration camps, and you come away with a different picture of what went on.

That is why I like the book "They Thought They Were Free." Written by a Jewish professor of history from University of Chicago in the early 1950's, the book details the stories of ten different Germans and how they reacted to life under Nazi rule. One guy is a thug who supported burning the synagogues and "re-settling" the Jewish people; another is a highly principled man who aided hundreds of people in fleeing Germany.

And eight stories representing the "average people" who were not on one side or the other in terms of being demonic or saintly. They were jsut trying to survive the day to day. They knew that their nation was changing dramatically, but the steps taken by German leaders were done incrementally, just as is happening here. (And here it is not Jewish people being rounded up, but the dramatic upheavals for those in America's lower and middle class. If there is a Holocaust here, it will involve economic status more than religious or ethnic background. And of course, measures to silence anyone guided by progressive principles.)

[pnorman]

5. Thanks for the lead.

I'm not sure yet which version I'll get, the Audible.com or the Kindle one. But I'll get one!

[janet118]

8. Kristen Scott Thomas is an amazing actress

I'd see the movie just to watch her. "I've Loved You So Long" is one of my all time favorite movies.